In ourselves we trust

All right, so this is a little old, but the trends identified in the Edelman Trust Barometer are still worth considering and point to how information will be received in 2007.
The biggest finding of the Trust report -- and it's a continuing trend -- is that people have confidence in people like them rather than subject experts. This explains a lot about trends relating to how content is presented both on the web and in other media:

• Increasing use of folksonomy-led news-sharing sites like del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Furl, or Clipmarks; i.e. what people call Web 2.0.


• The emphasis that all media are placing on User Generated Content (UGC) and blogs. Newspapers are relying on columnists who fill space in the demotic of their readership, while TV programmers believe that serious issues need to be commented on and even fronted by their audience, or people like their audience: witness Panorama dropping Robin Day / Dimbleby-like figures of austere knowledge giving way to more vox pop features where people complain about how difficult some part of their life is and demonstrate little hard evidence.


• Why Jeremy Vine's radio show is the worst piece of broadcasting you can imagine: the least-informed sections of society rant about irrelevant matters, interspersed with horrendous middle-of-the-road music.

There's good reason for promoting the people like me angle: you can develop a sense of community, foster ground-up collaboration that business in particular often loses out on, and target relevant markets more effectively. There is one big drawback however: people who are ignorant will increasingly rely on other people who share similar, comforting ignorance, as Richard Dawkins points out.
There's a reason people are experts: they've invested heavily in discovery and have demonstrated a talent for it in their particular area. If we just trust people like me, we risk stagnating in a stew of ignorance and self-righteousness.
And yes, I am aware of the irony of how this has been communicated.